Segregation and the Rise of the White Working Class

Segregation and the Rise of the White Working Class

The primary theme of the reading entitled "Segregation and the Rise of the White Working Class," which is the third chapter in William Julius Wilson's book The Declining Significance of Race, is the economic reasons for racial subjugation in the United States. The author provides a plethora of evidence that indicates that money and varying economic principles intertwined with class and Marxism were at the heart of the racial issue and antagonism between Whites and Blacks within this country. He examines this theme from a pre-Civil War context in both the North and the South largely viewed through the framework of slavery and its effects in these areas. He also deconstructs this theme after the war in economic and political terms that are largely divided along racial lines.

There are several pieces of evidence that the author uses to marshal this theme. The question of race is treated merely in respect to its economic impact -- the most imminent of which is the issue of slavery in the antebellum period. Slavery had a decidedly negative impact on the wages and livelihoods of free whites, who were paid substantially less in states in which slavery was practiced. The author goes on to imply that it was slavery's negative effect on white labor that was the main reason it did not foment in Northern free states, where the political might of free laborers was routinely used to not only prohibit slavery but also to encourage racial discrimination to discourage Blacks from taking jobs away from whites.

The true antipathy between Whites and Blacks, then, both before and after the Civil War, had to do with the former not wanting the latter to take over their jobs and bring their wages down. Thus, immigrant groups such as the Irish went to great lengths to persecute and keep Blacks from becoming substantial forces of labor in areas in which they were not already present (Wilson 48). The end of the Civil War, then, in which slaves were freed -- merely to assist the North's win and to preserve the Union, a fact which the author alludes to had the undesirable consequence of intensifying the competition between whites and blacks for labor purposes (Wilson 53) -- predictably increased racial intolerance. Again, it is critical to note that the primary reason for such intolerance was because Whites did not want Blacks to perform jobs which were traditionally held by the former.

Thus, there were many political maneuvers that took place during this conflict of interest. Antebellum attempts included the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, the former of which was an attempt by labor scarce large southern plantation owners to legally re-implement slavery, the latter of which were attempts by poorer whites to ensure that Blacks could not challenge them for jobs. Ironically, this competition produced an alliance between conservative business elite white politicians (who wanted the cheaper slave labor) and Blacks, who needed the politicians simply to legally labor. The result is that this alliance enabled white working class laborers to unite in attempts to keep Blacks from taking their jobs.